SiakelA fighting the good fight

[LadyMonk]

Hey everyone! I am really excited to join the monks for my first full 6 week challenge. I joined the rebellion halfway through the last challenge, and I am refreshed and ready to push forward.

Goal 1: jujutsu 2x a week. This should be easy enough. The class meets twice a week. The only tricky part will be spring break. My husband is in jujutsu with me though, so I will find a way to work out with him that week.

Goal 2: 1 minute plank. Right now I can barely hold 20 seconds. I am just going to work at holding it progressively longer until I reach my goal.

Goal 3: 2 servings of fruits or veggies a day. I need to increase produce, and when I don't think about it intentionally, I don't eat any at all!

Goal 3.5: eat 10+ servings a week at home. I'm just trying to get into the habit of cooking and grocery shopping.

Life goal: I want to lose 30 pounds by August (my birthday). My starting weight is 171 pounds. To this end I am doing a no soda challenge. I'm currently at a streak of 18 days soda free.

[LadyMonk]

Progress on goal 1 - Jujutsu has been great. Tuesdays are pretty much free practice unless enough upper belts show up to get organized. This week there were three of us and the other two had specific goals in mind so I left them to it. Since I was on my own, I practiced falls and rolls (ukemi) for over an hour. By the end of that I was doing much better! The best part was that I tackled some of the falls that Id been afraid of trying.

Goal 2 - I am up to 24 seconds. Not much improvement, but its measurable!

Goal 3 - Im getting there, but I still need to keep more fresh produce around the house. Frozen veggies arent cutting it.

Goal 3.5 - This has been mostly easy! Im definitely in the habit of eating at home more than not at this point. Next I need to level up my cooking skills!

[RisenPhoenix]

Hi Siakel! 

 

Welcome to the Guild! 

 

This is actually the OLD challenge from the last 6 week challenge.  I'm just going to move your thread over to the current area.  You'll get a lot more people popping their heads in that way!

 

(The goals look great, by the way!!)

[LadyMonk]

Thank you RisenPhoenix!!

[LadyMonk]

The warmup at jujutsu tonight was killer - and I was still recovering from Tuesday's pushups and night of ukemi!

 

 

So we did burpees, and I planked instead of pushups because I could NOT get my arms to move in any downward motions. We also ran 15 laps around the dojo. Honestly - too many different things to list!!! It was a 45 minute workout before we even started the jujutsu portion!

 

Tutorial Time! I did learn a new skill - my shihan called them "Rockers". Start in a downward dog position, then raise one leg straight up into the air behind you. Swing the leg forward so that your knee comes toward your chest. Move your hips forward with your leg, then go back to the starting position. Do this with one leg for 30 seconds without letting it touch the ground, then switch legs. I liked how thing one made me tired, but I could actually do it.

 

 

We finished off with a live combat session, and I defended myself...kinda! I froze up a little, but at least I didn't stop and ask for a redo like I did in the beginning of the semester. Overall, tonight was a definite success.

 

---Today marks 24 days with 0 soda.

 

 

[Tkal]

Hi and welcome here
 
How are you working out the plank goal? for me the best strategy was to work on shorter step and try to increase my total time. For example, if you reach 20 seconds easily, you can do 3-5 sets, with a short (1 minute or less) break in between. After a couple of days you should manage 22 seconds or maybe 25-25-20-20-15. Give yourself a couple of weeks and then go until failure: most likely you will be surprised by how much you improved
 
For veggies and fruit, if you just want to increase the intake a solution can be to drink them: just throw everything in a blender and you get a great smoothie. An orange and a kiwi fruit do a great job.
If you aim more to create the habit, make your own snack box. Carrots, bell peppers, cucumbers, celery sticks, radish. It doesn't take much to have them pealed and sliced and ready. I keep mine visible on my desk at work, so I know that I don't have to walk to the vending machine when my stomach calls in the afternoon. And if the stomach does not call, they goes for dinner and it is a double win
 
And in any case, good work so far

[LadyMonk]

Good idea with the planks! Ive been pushing to failure each time, and I havent been doing multiple sets in a day. I'm going to try that this week then report back

I'm really trying to create the habit and find out what I like. I've done the snack box before, and I definitely should do that again. I also love smoothies, so I have those a couple times a week.

I had zucchini and broccoli with steak for lunch today. It was so yummy. 😋

[Kishi]

Broccoli just rocks with red meat. It does. I don't know why.

 

Anyway, glad you got so much training done and that you cranked your limits as far as you could. That is fantastic. Glad to hear it.

[LadyMonk]

I set up my snack box last night my husband liked it so much he took a bunch to work with him today!

[RisenPhoenix]

I did the snack-box thing for a while.  Then I got lazy and started just... keeping bags of veggies at work for my lunches.  I'm frequently called out for being "the healthy guy."  Kinda surreal for me, honestly.

 

Sounds like you may have to start making twice as many snack boxes, though.  Hope your husband helps slice dem veggies.

[LadyMonk]

We had a guest Shihan teach jujutsu tonight. Shihan Diane was fantastic and inspiring, particularly since there arent many women in this dojo. She was friendly and helpful, and made me realize how much I've grown since working with her last. Plus, shes writing a womens self defense book to be titled "Never the Victim". I'm so excited for that!

[LadyMonk]

No jujutsu tonight, so I went to the gym for the first time in forever. It felt really good to work out my arms in a traditional weight lifting kind of way. I'll probably be back there a lot with spring break coming up.

[LadyMonk]

I have a long day of work today, which usually means no workout. Instead, I completed a HIT workout as described in sidequest 3. I really liked it!! No section was too long, and I didnt get bored. I feel like I got a really good workout in about half the time of my putsing around at the gym days.

Also, food quest update: I am rocking it!! I need to buy a bunch more produce because my husband and I ate all of it! We didnt let most of it go bad this time. I think Ive also saved a bunch of money by eating at home so much. Its been about 15 meals cooked at home rather than 10. I need to keep lazer focused to not backlslide, but I am feeling good!

[LadyMonk]

Just measured my plank so I could report: 35seconds!!!

[Kishi]

Sounds neat! You've been very busy over here, and it looks like you've been finding a lot of opportunities to train well. Glad to hear that the HIIT training has been suiting you.

 

Also, it's amazing to find out that eating at home is so much cheaper than eating out. Good times, really.

[Tkal]

We had a guest Shihan teach jujutsu tonight. Shihan Diane was fantastic and inspiring, particularly since there arent many women in this dojo. She was friendly and helpful, and made me realize how much I've grown since working with her last. Plus, shes writing a womens self defense book to be titled "Never the Victim". I'm so excited for that!

It is common to have few women in martial arts. That makes even more interesting and useful to train with those who reached an high rank. Usually as a woman you cannot rely on your size and strength as much as a man, so you need to work much more on your strategy and on the precision of your techniques. I hope you will have more opportunities as this one

 

Also, food quest update: I am rocking it!! I need to buy a bunch more produce because my husband and I ate all of it! We didnt let most of it go bad this time. I think Ive also saved a bunch of money by eating at home so much. Its been about 15 meals cooked at home rather than 10. I need to keep lazer focused to not backlslide, but I am feeling good!

Not sure about your family habits, but preparing meals together with your husband (and kids?) will give you some extra quality time together. I know that for us it has become a reason on its own not to go out. And also when I visit my sister we have plenty of meaningful conversations over boiling pans and chopping boards

 

Just measured my plank so I could report: 35seconds!!!

Way to go!

[RisenPhoenix]

Just measured my plank so I could report: 35seconds!!!

 

Whoooo hoooo!!  Way to go!  The 30 second plank milestone is big! 

[LadyMonk]

I'm alive! The diet goals are going well, but I'm just meeting the minimum. Working out last week did not happen. I worked a grand total of 49 hours between the two jobs, and had a family function on my day off. I could have made the time, but I didn't have the motivation or energy.

I did start meditating after reading the blog post on it. That has been pretty great in terms of keeping me from losing my mind.

[Kishi]

You train for life. You don't live to train. Sometimes life happens. Hope you were ready for it.

[LadyMonk]

So I went back to jujutsu last night and learn grappling for the first time. It was so akward!! But once we started practicing with resistance, it was actually really fun.

Then we moved on to combat practice. I took on two attackers, and did OK. I had to go twice because the first time the second person "killed" me with a club to the head. I also acted as one of four attackers to a green belt. (That's a relatively high belt in our school.) He got me in a choke hold and used me as a shield against the other attackers. I tapped out, but he couldn't feel it, and the Shihan didn't call us to stop. I ended up leaving the room in tears after the combat was over. Both the green belt and my Shihan felt terrible, but I am mostly embarrassed. I want injured, it just hurt. I feel like I'm not a good uke because I have a low pain tolerance.

[Kishi]

Oh, no. That sounds rough.

 

Being a good uke doesn't necessarily mean having a high pain tolerance, although being able and willing to endure a certain amount of discomfort isn't a bad thing either. Uke's job is to endure the technique and to bow out when necessary. You bow out because you want to preserve yourself as an implement for the training of others, and tori's job is to be sensitive and aware enough of what's going on so as not to damage you (much).

 

Is that to suggest that you shouldn't try to grow tougher and develop yourself so that you're comfortable in the discomfort? Not at all. I think that toughness is a fantastic thing to cultivate and you should try to cultivate it. But you need to do it on your own time and not when you're in a choke.

[sarakingdom]

It's especially their job to look out for you when doing something that's potentially pretty dangerous, like chokes.  The average open-hand shomen attack or whatever isn't really a big deal, but chokes are.  And the advanced belts should always be careful of junior belts when training.  I'm sorry it was at your expense, but it sounds like that was a lesson the nage and your sensei needed, to not get so caught up in the excitement that they lost track of the safety of the students involved.  Accidents happen and sometimes you miss a tap, but it's their responsibility that it got missed.  I'm really glad it was something you could let go and write off afterwards.  That's really awesome.

 

Don't feel a bit bad about your pain tolerance or whatever.  Your job is just to train safely, and tap out when you hit your limit.  You did it perfectly.  It's not your job to take whatever pain level they dish out.  And if there's someone in the class with a lower pain tolerance than everyone else, you know what, that's not really anyone's problem.  It's the nage's job to match their technique to the capacity of their uke, whether that's affected by injury or disability or low pain tolerance or illness or psychological fears, and the uke's job to communicate that limit.  Some nages may love playing rough when they can (some ukes, too), but you train with the person in front of you, whatever limitations there are on either side.   If pain tolerance is something you want to work on, you can, but don't feel it makes you a bad uke.  People walk in with hundreds of physical (or mental) issues that affect their limits, and it doesn't make them bad ukes.

[LadyMonk]

Thank you guys for your added perspective. Sarakingdom your post made me think about what I would feel as the tori in this situation, and it wouldnt ever be irritation that an uke needed to tap. Chokes can be really dangerous, and I think I'm lucky that it was a tap based on pain tolerance and not that I was being injured.

This week is spring break anyway, so I wont be going to jujutsu until a week from Tuesday. Im still looking forward to improving, but a break to do other things is well timed. I did a HIIT workout today, and I'll be headed to the gym a few times this week too. Maybe Ill catch a dance class.

[LadyMonk]

Second day in a row of working out at home. I don't normally like to, because I like all of the machines in a gym and the structure of a class. But I really like how much less time it takes. This is a benefit I hadn't really appreciated before.

Food goal is doing OK. I overate today at work (which is not technically part of the goal) I did have a smaller dinner, and I actually feel alright despite the giant lunch. I'm thinking Indian tomorrow

And as to the plank... I have totally slacked off. I did time myself today at just over 30 seconds. I need to step it up if I'm going to make progress there!

[LadyMonk]

I decided to shake it up today. I completed two circuits of the beginner body weight workout. That was hard! (in a good way) I do not do enough push ups.

I also restocked my veggie drawer with snacks